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lnferris / ocean_data_tools

A MATLAB toolbox for interacting with bulk freely-available oceanographic data.
MIT License
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GSW compatibility #27

Closed kakearney closed 4 years ago

kakearney commented 4 years ago

This issue is part of the JOSS review (openjournals/joss-reviews#2497)

I think the statements regarding the compatiblity of the ocean_data_tools structures with the Gibbs Seawater Toolbox are misleading. Yes, certain fields from the ODT structures can be used as input to GSW functions, in the same way that any temperature, salinity, or pressure data can be used. However, the structure format does not add any additional value to GSW. In fact, it may cause problems, given that the the ODT functions do not import the variable meta-data that explain exactly what type of data are in each dataset, e.g. that the TEMP_ADJUSTED field from an Argo float is ITS-90 in-situ temperature (t in GSW syntax), while the Mercator model thetao field is potential temperature (pt in GSW syntax).

I excitedly hoped that ODT would provide some nice wrapper functions to help users naviagate the often-tricky nuances of applying the GSW equation-of-state calculations when starting from different temp/salinity/pressure combos, but it does not. I would suggest removing this compatiblity claim unless some more concrete connection (either in terms of new functions, or extended documentation matching up ODT structure fields to the GSW expected inputs) is added.

lnferris commented 4 years ago

I have removed the compatibility claims! Reference to GSW is now on the same playing field as the suggestion to apply custom calculations after data has been neatly packed into structs.